Research Professor, Director of the Center for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector

Bernard Enjolra's research is centered on civil society in a broad sense. This includes topics such as volunteering, voluntary organizations, governance, social capital and trust, as well as civic engagement as well as the digitization of the public sphere, social media and freedom of expression.

He received in 2010 the ”Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit (PNP) Division Best Article Award” for his article 'A Governance-Structure Approach to Voluntary Organizations' published in 2009 in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Bernard Enjolras received a Master in Political Sciences from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po), Paris, France and a Master in Economics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,Paris, France. He received his PhD in Economics from Université de Paris I. Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France and his PhD in sociology from Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. He has been a Senior Fellow in Policy Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, and guest professor at Montpellier University, Aix-Marseille University, University Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne. He serves as Board Member of Peace Research Institute Oslo-PRIO.

Terrorist attacks can instigate widespread and long-lasting fear. Mass media can enforce fear by framing the events and affecting their perceptions. We implemented a news experiment to investigate the fear-triggering effects of different types of terrorist threats. We manipulated the type of terrorist group in three scenarios: a homegrown Islamist group, a foreign Islamist group, and a domestic far-right group. The fourth group served as the control group. The data were collected in early 2017 from Finland (N = 2024), Norway (N = 2063), Spain (N = 2000), France (N = 2003), and the United States (N = 2039). The results showed that in Finland and France, fear was higher in groups primed with jihadist scenarios. Ethnic intolerance was associated with fear related to jihadist news across all of the countries. Institutional trust was positively associated with fear, whereas interpersonal trust was negatively associated when significant. Moreover, highly neurotic individuals were likely to fear more across the cultural context or threat type. The results support previous studies on two cross-culturally merging dimensions of personality and emotions; neuroticism, and negative affect.

This article examines the potentially buffering effect of generalized social trust on fear in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and in situations of terrorist threat. It draws on comparative, longitudinal survey data, examining the cases of the 2011 Utøya terrorist attack in Norway, the 2016 Nice attack in France and the 2017 Barcelona attack in Spain; it also draws on a comparative news story experiment that examined the bolstering effect of social trust in relation to terrorist threat. The results show that high levels of generalized social trust before exposure to terrorism are linked to lower levels of fear after the event. This relationship holds for the longitudinal survey data and the news story experiment, and across national contexts. This result indicates a general bolstering effect of social trust. However, the size of effects vary between national contexts and incidents of terrorism. This indicates that the effect of trust is dependent on the social and cultural structures of trust in the different countries and on specific factors related to the attacks.

This article develops a theoretical perspective to study the conditions for media policy formation under the condition of digitalization – the Media Policy Field approach – building on an organizational field approach in combination with theories of policy development. The theory of strategic action fields offers a meso-level view of how actors in media fields interact and how their respective opportunities for influencing policy are structured by the state of the field and their respective positions. This theory is linked with the Multiple Streams Approach, which maintains that change occurs when policy entrepreneurs connect problem, policy and politics streams, and create policy windows. The Media Policy Field approach proposes three analytical foci for the study of current media policy processes: collective frames, incumbent and challenger roles and policy windows. Empirical strategies for pursuing this theoretical programme are discussed.

Emotions, such as anger and fear, have been shown to influence people’s political behavior. However, few studies link emotions specifically to how people debate political issues and seek political information online. In this article, we examine how anger and fear are related to politics-oriented digital behavior, attempting to bridge the gap between the thus far disconnected literature on political psychology and the digital media. Based on survey data, we show that anger and fear are connected to distinct behaviors online. Angry people are more likely to engage in debates with people having both similar and opposing views. They also seek out information confirming their views more frequently. Anxious individuals, by contrast, tend to seek out information contradicting their opinions. These findings reiterate predictions made in the extant literature concerning the role of emotions in politics. Thus, we argue that anger reinforces echo chamber dynamics and trench warfare dynamics in the digital public sphere, while fear counteracts these dynamics.

This chapter addresses the socioeconomic impact of the third sector in Europe. Overall, the available empirical results based on existing data remain inconclusive, mainly due to the poor quality of available data about the third sector and volunteering in Europe. Third sector impact (TSI) means direct or indirect, medium- to long-term consequences of the distinctive features of volunteering or of the third sector organizations (TSOs) on individuals or on the community, ranging from neighborhoods to society in general. Through an exhaustive review of existing empirical research, a series of domains of impact are investigated, including well-being and quality of life, innovation, civic engagement, empowerment, advocacy and community building, and human resource development. To be sure, there is evidence that political engagement increases because of volunteering. In addition, volunteers appear to have better health and a greater sense of well-being than nonvolunteers do, but it seems more likely that persons with these attributes are more likely to volunteer than that volunteering fosters health and wellbeing. Among the unemployed, volunteering improves mental health and well-being, but only when there are generous welfare benefits. Important questions about the impact of the third sector remain, however, and the chapter concludes with a call for a more systematic empirical effort to assess these impacts.

This chapter looks at changes in the population of associations, organization structures, and patterns of collaboration with other organizations, businesses, and the public sector, harnessing data from several censuses and surveys conducted among national and local voluntary organizations in Norway from 1980 to 2013. The purpose is to provide an empirical overview of changes in the voluntary sector since the 1980s and assess how the processes of individualization, immigration, digitalization, and development of New Public Management (NPM) have affected the structural features of the Norwegian voluntary sector and transformed the popular movement model that has been dominant in Norway since the 1840s. The organizational landscape at the local level has been transformed resulting from an increased local community orientation related to the decline of the popular movements. At the national level, there is a significant increase in public interest organizations and no decline in traditional organizations. The findings support the thesis of a weakening of the hierarchical organizational model, seen from both the local and national levels, resulting in a development toward a two-tiered organizational society. However, there is also an array of evidence pointing toward an increasing prevalence of network-based communication as an alternative to a hierarchical structure and as a means of linking members and decision-makers in national organizations as well as local organizations.

Contentions about freedom of speech aim at the boundaries of this freedom, not its core. The objective of this chapter is to recast and interpret the findings of the preceding chapters within a theoretical framework, combining the insights of two separate fields of scholarship: the sociology of the public sphere and the sociology of social boundaries. This chapter develops an understanding of the public sphere as a social sphere, being both a sphere of cultural and symbolic integration, as well as of conflict and power struggle. It emphasizes the need to extend our understanding of the public sphere beyond its role as a space for rational discussion and deliberative politics. It continues by spelling out the criteria that an extended concept of the public sphere should meet. The chapter gives an interpretation, in terms of symbolic boundary-making processes, of the public debates related to immigration and freedom of speech in Norway. Public debates about freedom of speech are concerned not only with the limits of freedom of speech, but also with the symbolic recognition and integration of identity groups. Both types of boundaries (of freedom of speech and identity groups) can be understood as a power struggle for the position of these identity groups in the political community. What is at stake in these debates is the inclusion or exclusion of different identities in a multicultural society. The social definition of these symbolic boundaries impacts society’s ‘moral order’ and society’s social stratification.

In this article, we take issue with the claim by Sunstein and others that online discussion takes place in echo chambers, and suggest that the dynamics of online debates could be more aptly described by the logic of ‘trench warfare’, in which opinions are reinforced through contradiction as well as confirmation. We use a unique online survey and an experimental approach to investigate and test echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online debates. The results show that people do indeed claim to discuss with those who hold opposite views from themselves. Furthermore, our survey experiments suggest that both confirming and contradicting arguments have similar effects on attitude reinforcement. Together, this indicates that both echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics – a situation where attitudes are reinforced through both confirmation and disconfirmation biases – characterize online debates. However, we also find that two-sided neutral arguments have weaker effects on reinforcement than one-sided confirming and contradicting arguments, suggesting that online debates could contribute to collective learning and qualification of arguments.

Social media have the potential to influence power relations in political parties as they allow individual candidates to campaign more independently of the central party. In this paper, we scrutinize the relationship between individualization and digital social media in a study that combines the 2013 Norwegian Candidate Survey with candidates’ Twitter data. We ask, first, to what extent are social media used as an individualistic campaign tool? Second, does an individualized social media campaign style increase influence in the Twitter sphere? Third, what constitutes success on Twitter? We found two main styles of social media campaigning: a party-centered and an individualized style. Moreover, an individualized style did increase the possibility of being active on Twitter, but it had a negative effect on Twitter influence. The Twitter influentials are young, male, and relatively centrally placed in their parties. In a hybrid communication system, it appears that the candidates who gain influence in social media are those who are able to create a synergy between traditional media channels and social media.

This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective' changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms.

Enjolras, Bernard (2010). The Public Policy Paradox. Normative Foundations of Social Economy and Public Policies, In Marie Bouchard (ed.),
The Worth of the Social Economy: An International Perspective.
Peter Lang Publishing Group.
ISBN 978-9052015804.
-.
s 43
- 60

This article develops a theoretical approach to the governance structure of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit organizations are analyzed as governance structures that reinforce reciprocity norms (generalized or balanced) and make pooling resources possible. Their governance structure presents specific characteristics related to the formal aims of the organization, its form of ownership, residual claimants, decision-making procedures, forms of accountability, allocation of power, control processes, as well as the incentives it creates. These characteristics facilitate collective action directed at public interest, mutual interest or advocacy. Nonprofit organizations are capable of operating in complex environments, mobilizing resources from market operations, public subsidies and reciprocity (volunteer work, donations), in pursuit of civic and democratic objectives. The governance structure enables them to remain relatively more effective than other organizational forms, even if nonprofit organizations may experience governance failures that diminish their trustworthiness and effectiveness.

This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which considers its contributions to European economic development, citizen well-being and human development. The Third Sector As A Renewable Resource for Europe presents the findings of the Third Sector Impact (TSI) project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7). It recognises that in a time of social and economic distress, as well as enormous pressures on governmental budgets, the third sector and volunteering represent a unique ‘renewable resource’ for social and economic problem-solving and civic engagement in Europe.

This book aims at presenting a conceptual apparatus and empirical analysis of the ways Scandinavian civil society is affected by social transformations by focusing on the Norwegian case. The Norwegian empirical focus allows identifying processes and factors of change that are relevant outside this context and enable us to understand, on a more general basis, the relationship between social transformations and transformations affecting the voluntary sector. This book will make an original contribution to the field of comparative civil society studies both by increasing the available knowledge on the Scandinavian civil society model and by analyzing the societal transformations affecting civil society over time.

Bay, Ann-Helén & Enjolras, Bernard (2010). Disabled and detached? Political participation and social integration among welfare recipients.
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In this paper, we use survey data to study social and political integration among disability pensioners. The aim is to find out whether being dependent upon social transfers leads to low participation and social integration. Our analyses reveal that disability-benefit recipients are less socially integrated than members of the working population as far as they participate less in voluntary organizations (both as members and volunteers) and as far as they display lower levels of social and vertical trust. On the other hand, there is no difference between disability pensioners and employed when it comes to breath of social networks.

This report aims at assessing the means by which the capacity of the social economy to contribute to social inclusion can be improved. Within this perspective, the report identifies the barriers that hinder the social economy to play optimally its role. It focuses its point to the opportunities of improvement that can help the social economy to better contribute to social inclusion. The potential contribution from the social economy to social inclusion is often under-estimated by public authorities and policy-makers. Consequently, the absence of coherence within different policy-fields and between different institutional levels – national, regional, and local – contribute to limit the potential of the social economy. Social economy remains too often a very local experience, limiting its transferability to other regions.

This paper focuses on what one may define as a new type of voluntary organization - the networked voluntary organization –which is a hybrid between network and hierarchy as forms of governance. Based on the case study of a voluntary organization, Amnesty International Norway (AIN), the paper uses the term ’decoupling’ to discuss how such hybridity may reshape membership and democratic processes within organizations. Three types of decoupling are discussed: decoupling related to the organisation’s identity, decoupling between membership and activism and decoupling between modes of governance. In our study of the AIN internet communication we saw a potential for decoupling related to the identity of the organisation, but concluded that the present communication was too one-directional to have this effect. In relation to membership, the use of network technologies seemed to have diverse consequences. On the one hand we saw a potential for recoupling virtual activism with democratic processes. On the other hand, deepened divides between traditional activism and modern activism could also result. In relation to modes of governance, the existing hybridity of the AIN was not visibly accentuated through the use of web, since network self co-ordination did not increase in scope or in importance. While the increased and strategic use of the web by AIN did not seem to have led to a revolution in governance, we argue that it served to reconfigure aspects of governance, and that more groundbreaking change may occur as a more long time result. Paperet er tilknyttet prosjektet Nettverkssamfunn og frivillige organisasjoner